The Rigveda opens with a hymn to Agni, the sacred fire. Its first three verses are given here in Devanagari with the accent marks a reciter reads, and then in plain English.
The verses
अ॒ग्निमी॑ळे पु॒रोहि॑तं य॒ज्ञस्य॑ दे॒वमृ॒त्विज॑म् ।
होता॑रं रत्न॒धात॑मम् ॥ १ ॥
अ॒ग्निः पूर्वे॑भि॒र्ऋषि॑भि॒रीड्यो॒ नूत॑नैरु॒त ।
स दे॒वाँ एह व॑क्षति ॥ २ ॥
अ॒ग्निना॑ र॒यिम॑श्नव॒त्पोष॑मे॒व दि॒वेदि॑वे ।
य॒शसं॑ वी॒रव॑त्तमम् ॥ ३ ॥
In plain words
- I praise Agni, who is placed at the front of the sacrifice: its god, its priest of the seasons, the one who calls the gods, the best giver of treasure.
- Agni is worthy of praise from the seers of old, and from the new ones too. May he bring the gods here.
- Through Agni a person gains wealth, and a plenty that grows day after day, full of honour and rich in brave sons.
How to read the marks
The Rigveda shows the rise and fall of the voice with two small marks and one absence of a mark.
- A short line under a syllable, as in अ॒, marks the low tone, called anudatta.
- A short upright line above a syllable, as in मी॑, marks the falling tone, called svarita, which comes just after a raised syllable.
- A syllable with no mark is said high: at the raised pitch, udatta, or, after a falling tone, at a steady high pitch that runs on until the next mark.
Why the accents matter
In Vedic recitation the accent is part of the word. The same letters said with a different tone can be a different word, so teachers have passed the tones on as carefully as the sounds, from voice to voice, for a very long time.
What the page has to get right
These marks are ordinary characters, but many fonts do not draw them, and then the lines float away from their letters or appear as empty boxes. This theme carries its own Devanagari font, which places them on the right letter, on a phone and on a computer, with nothing fetched from another site. Open this page on your phone and look.
The meanings above were written for this site, in plain words. They are not a scholarly translation.